“The LORD said, ‘Who will entice Ahab to go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?’ And one said this while another said that. “Then a spirit came forward and stood before the LORD and said, ‘I will entice him.’ “The LORD said to him, ‘How?’ And he said, ‘I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ Then He said, ‘You are to entice him and also prevail. Go and do so.’ “Now therefore, behold, the LORD has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; and the LORD has proclaimed disaster against you.” (1 Kings 22:20-23, NASB)

It’s Ok God, We’ve Got It All Under Control; Don’t Worry, We’ll Call You If We Need You

Here Apprising Ministries presents further indication of evangelicalism’s disgusting decent back into the religious bondage originating in the messed up mysticism of apostate Roman Catholicism. And so we remind you Emergent Evangelical Prophet Tony Campolo is going to be bringing his neo-Gnostic wisdom gleaned from his practice of corrupt Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism to enlighten Southern Baptists in Virginia. Campolo’s featured speaker at the Baptist General Association of Virginia (BGAV) “185th Annual Meeting of the BGAV” November 11-12, which you can see for yourself in Tony Campolo To Enlighten Southern Baptists In Virginia.

Yet the obstensibly “Protestant” Southern Baptist Convention right now has entire state conventions within who are openly promoting the spiritually wacky works of Living Spiritual Teacher and Quaker mystic Richard Foster. Since when were Quakers evangelicals? However, see yet another example for yourself in Georgia Baptist Convention (SBC) Now Promoting the Cult of Richard Foster. But you need to understand that Dr. Gary Gilley was dead on target when he said of the key textbook of this so-called Spiritual Formation, namely, “Celebration of Discipline” by Richard Foster is an Encyclopedia of Theological Error. Even so, with evangelicalism’s lust for so-called “Christian” mysticism, as I pointed out in Apostasy, Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism (CSM) in the SBC and Disease in the Church, we are currently immersed in an epidemic of me-no-wanna-see-i-tis.

In our time we are witnessing relentless revisionist history being advanced by influential leaders in the extremely ecumenical and inclusive postliberal cult of the Emergent Church like quasi-rabbi Rob Bell and his friend Emerging Church Pastor Doug Pagitt sowing much confusion within young groups, and sadly, even among those who should be leaders within the evangelical community. And most of it’s actually aimed at obscuring what was really at stake in the Protestant Reformation. I’m afraid that anyone who doesn’t see a full scale frontal assault on Sola Scriptura, which Dr. James R. White correctly identified as “the formal principle of the Reformation,” within evangelicalism today simply hasn’t been listening.

But it’s not like these seducing spirits aren’t ringing like Bells:

The Bells started questioning their assumptions about the Bible itself–discovering the Bible as a human product,” as Rob puts it, rather than the product of divine fiat. “The Bible is still in the center for us,” Rob says, “but it’s a different kind of center. We want to embrace mystery, rather than conquer it.”

“I grew up thinking that we’ve figured out the Bible,” Kristen says, “that we knew what it means. Now I have no idea what most of it means. And yet I feel like life is big again–like life used to be black and white, and now it’s in color…”

The Bells, who flourished at evangelical institutions from Wheaton to Fuller Theological Seminary to Grand Rapids’s Calvary Church before starting Mars Hill,…[felt] that very world, as the Bells tell it, became constricting–in Kristen’s phrase, “black and white…”

And how did the Bells find their way out of the black-and-white world where they had been so successful and so dissatisfied? “Our lifeboat,” Kristen says, “was A New Kind of Christian.” (Online source, emphasis mine)

This is part of the problem with continually insisting that one of the absolutes of the Christian faith must be a belief that “Scripture alone” is our guide. It sounds nice but it is not true… When people say that all we need is the Bible, it is simply not true. (Velvet Elvis, 067,068, emphasis added) …

Ah, today though we’re told by these neo-Gnostics that we don’t need to warn people to be very careful who teaches them concerning the Christian faith. Nah, they say we just eat the fish and spit out the bones. However, this assumes that our fallen reason is itself capable of protecting us even if the Lord frowns upon that mistaken idea. Odd isn’t it; these mystic dreamers who boast so of their ability to enter God’s presence with their “Christian” version of the transcendental meditation-lite of their Contemplative/Centering Prayer don’t seem to be able to comprehend the spiritual gravity of the opening text I used above. Hear this: If God gives you over to deception there is absolulely nothing a mere human being can do about it.

Still undaunted more and more arrogant evangelicals are following the blind leading of “Progressive” [read: postliberal] evangelicals content to play their version of spiritual Russian Roulette. Case in point, the sufficiency of Scripture just wasn’t enough for Tony Campolo:

There was a yearning for something more, and I found that I was increasingly spiritually gratified as I adopted older ways of praying–ways that have largely been ignored by those of us in the Protestant tradition. Counter-Reformation saints like Ignatius of Loyola have become important sources of help as I have begun to learn from them modes of contemplative prayer. I practice what is known as “centering prayer,” in which a sacred word is repeated as a way to be in God’s presence. (Online source, emphasis mine)

Let’s get that straight; apostate Roman Catholic monks who, as learned men along with the religious system they swear their alligience to, deny the Gospel of Jesus Christ itself ” have now become important sources of help” in Campolo’s reasoning. This even after God rejected them and their sordid and stupid superstitions in His Reformation of the Church, which He bought with His Own blood (Acts 20:28)? Well, in O, But Baptist State Convention Of North Carolina (SBC) Wanted You To Know… I provide you a link to show some of the wonderful disciplines of religious bondage “Counter-Reformation [hello!] saints” like loyal to Rome Ignatius of Loyola placed upon his disciples.

For example we give you these rules for self-righteousness which Ignatius of Loyola gave to his Jesuits, the spiritual Gestapo of that Counter-Reformation:

First Rule. The first: All judgment laid aside, we ought to have our mind ready and prompt to obey, in all, the true Spouse of Christ our Lord, which is our holy Mother the Church Hierarchical…

Second Rule. The second: To praise confession to a Priest, and the reception of the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar once in the year…

Third Rule. The third: To praise the hearing of Mass often,..

Thirteenth Rule. To be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it,…

As a former Roman Catholic whom God, through no effort of mine, graciously delivered from that type of slavish devotion to what Jesus calls the traditions of men I am in a unique position to tell you to flee from men like Campolo who would dare embrace deceivers like Ignatius of Loyola as brothers in Christ. Men and women, mystics e.g. like Teresa of Avila and her duped discipline John of the Cross who have now become spiritual heroes to fools like Foster were also fighting against the very Gospel of Jesus Christ; salvation through God’s grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

And yet inclusive ecumenicists like Campolo would have us believe that the Holy Spirit spoke out of one side of His mouth to these mystics of the Counter-Reformation and then out of the other side of HIs mouth to the Reformers. Nonsense; and if you personally think that you can simply pick and choose through the spiritual dung pile of these neo-Gnostics and their psuedo-Christian mysticism all the while staying in control, I’m here to say, you’d best think again:

For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way. Then that lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His coming; that is, the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders, and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false, in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness. (2 Thessalonians 2:7-12, NASB)

See also:

TONY CAMPOLO WITH “MYSTICAL ENCOUNTERS FOR CHRISTIANS”

DOES PSALM 46:10 TEACH CONTEMPLATIVE/CENTERING PRAYER?

TONY CAMPOLO: “CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM” TRUMPS THE BIBLE

EMERGENT CHURCH: TONY CAMPOLO QUOTES